Geist 68
Books That Shook the World
Michael Hayward reviews Atlantic Books' series of 'Books That Shook the World' and Alberto Manguel's biography of Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey. more
Phantom Limb
Michael Hayward reviews Phantom Limb by Theresa Kishkan, a series of essays exploring of the complexity and magic of the natural world. more
Intellectual in the Landscape
When the celebrated English poet Rupert Brooke came to Canada on the train from New York in 1913, he had been warned that he would find “a country without a soul.” The gloomy streets of Montreal, overshadowed by churches and banks and heavy telephone wires, reminded him of the equally gloomy streets of Glasgow and Birmingham. more
Markings
For most of her adult life, my mother, Danuta Rago, was a professional photographer in Poland. In the early seventies she travelled to the Asiatic republics of the ussr and to Siberia. Her assignment was to take portraits of happy members of the coll more
Identity Crises
Several years ago Ian McKay, a Queen’s University history professor, published a book called The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (McGill-Queen’s University Press) in which he argued that the image many of us have of Nova Scotia as a tartan-wearing, bagpipe-squealing mini-Scotland is pretty much a fabrication. more
Bologna Erases Canada
Bologna, Italy, known as both “the Fat” and “the Red,” is a city to a make a bookish vacationer salivate. Less overrun by package tours than Rome, Florence or Venice, Bologna combines superb food with the wonderful bookstores that seem to be the inevitable companion of left-wing politics. more
Eldorado
Art museums and geographical exploration curiously share a common story. The first chapter of the story takes place in Peru. In 1540, the conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro, lost in the strange Amazonian jungle, entrusted one of his men, Francisco de Orellana, to take their remaining brigantine and set off down the Napo River in search of provisions. more
World's Toughest Milkman
Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman, whose catchphrase was "I thought I told you to shut up," first appeared in 1978 in the Georgia Straight (Vancouver). more
Proposition: A Novel Without Words
From Southern Cross: A Novel of the South Seas, re-issued in Canada in 2007 by Drawn & Quarterly and originally published in 1951 in a small edition by Ward Ritchie Press. more
The Long Weekend of Louis Riel
louis riel liked back bacon & eggs easyover nothing’s as easy as it seems tho when the waitress cracked the eggs open louis came to his guns blazing like dissolution like the fingers of his hand coming apart as he squeezed the trigger more
Causeway
Three walked barefoot into the sea,mother, father and only childwith trousers rolled above the knee.A stretch of water—half a mile;granite loaves made a cobbled road when the tide was low. Tide was high. more
St. John's Park
This photo was taken in Winnipeg’s North End at St. John’s Park on Main Street, in 1940 or so. I was about five years old and the only girl in the family. An accident, my parents told me. A happy accident. more
Deep Tissue Trauma
. . . who came on his Vespa wearing an army cap and fatigues, and smelling of rose attar, and I asked him, look, I had this problem in the States . . . more
The Long Weekend of Louis Riel
louis riel liked back bacon & eggs easyover nothing’s as easy as it seems tho when the waitress cracked the eggs open louis came to his guns blazing like dissolution like the fingers of his hand coming apart as he squeezed the trigger more
Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians
Carl Bernstein. Reporter. Author. Political analyst.Jackson Browne. Singer. Songwriter. Eagles enabler.John Daly. Golfer.Daniel Day-Lewis. Actor. Academy Award winner. Crazy Irish guy. more
Blue Shirt
When Al Purdy got up for his turn and peered down at us, the crown of his head almost grazed the bank of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, or so it seemed to us—or seems to me now. In a big, barging voice he prefaced his reading by asking what we had more
Potluck Café
When I started working here at the Potluck Café people yelled at me. I was too old and slow and some of the residents were angry that I was there and not the girl before. Then one day I came in and thought, Oh there’s flowers here, I’m going to wear them. I asked Johnny my boss if I could wear flowers in my ears, he said sure so I started wearing them to cut the ice. I wore them for every person. They’d say, I like your flowers. I’d say I’m wearing them for you. more
What Day It Is
Among the people who live outside the Dominion building in downtown Vancouver, across the street from the cenotaph at Victory Square, is a woman who might be in her late forties and who occasionally turns up in a wedding dress. I’ve never seen her speak to anyone. She simply walks up and holds out her empty hand toward you. more
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ADVICE FOR THE LIT-LORN As a writer who drafts in longhand, then inputs the draft in a word processor, then the same again for each revision, am I a wanton polluter of the Mother Earth? —Old-Fashioned, Toronto ON |
